Category: Activists Speak out

by Judith Bello Hancock Air National Guard Base was one of the first domestic drone bases to come on line. The base is located in a pleasant suburb of Syracuse New York, along side the International Airport. The 174th Attack Wing at Hancock is tasked with flying Reaper Drone missions over Afghanistan and other places on the far side of the world that they are unwilling to name. They also fly Drones berthed locally over the Adirondacks to the East

by George Cassidy Payne, Published on Talker of the Town, June 24, 2019 The unmanned drone narrative is wrong. Someone is always operating these highly sophisticated killing/surveillance machines. Militarized drones may be maneuvered thousands of miles away by human pilots, but they are always being flown by someone. More to the point, they are being used by human beings to launch missile strikes that have killed at least 2,000 people since the beginning of Bush’s “War on Terror.” Although estimates

Header and photos all from Voices for Creative Nonviolence by Kathy Kelly, published on Voices for Creative Nonviolence, November 8, 2018 Over these past three days, Voices and a coalition of justice-minded organizations have been at and around the United Nations in New York City protesting the ongoing U.S.-Saudi attack on famine- imperiled Yemen. Details are available at www.vcnv.org along with next steps for people looking for ways to get involved. Participants Kathy Kelly, Brian Terrell, and Jules Orkin write

Friends, this is a great film on the damage done by drone warfare and the increasing potential for state terrorism presented by drones. The video is from 2016 but I have never seen it before so I’m glad it turned up in my email today. The film has interviews with whistleblower Sean Westmoreland, and many of the antidrone activists and drone victims from Waziristan whom we met there as well. And, interviews with our good friends Nick Mottern of Knowdrones.com

Image: Taken from the Fort Orange Club Action, 31 Arrested. Why are you here? Ann Tiffany, “Because I’m committed to making a change” Videos by John Amidon of Upstate Drone Action participants and others at the Poor People’s Campaign events in Albany, May and June of 2019. John Amidon is an active member of the Upstate Drone Action Coalition and of Veterans for Peace.

by Ed Kinane To work against militarism and for social justice is to struggle for hearts and minds. We “educate, agitate, and organize.” We reach out to the public to mobilize its conscience. But the public is large and we are few. Most ways to reach the public are costly. Or shaped by other agendas. So mostly we operate small scale. We could however make much greater use of a familiar and broad public forum: letters to the editor. LTEs

by David Swanson, originally published on World Beyond War, Feb 21. 2018 World Beyond War has been raising funds for and renting billboards in opposition to war. We’ve run into censorship from numerous billboard companies but persevered, and more billboards are on their way. First we put this message up here in Charlottesville, Va., and then in Baltimore, Md. (see explanation of the 3% calculation here): Now we’re putting these two images up on billboards in Syracuse, NY, where drone

Violence begets violence. War profits only the few, the rich, the powerful — the 1%. As moral beings and tax paying citizens we must vigorously oppose war. Especially those wars of aggression perpetrated by the United States and its allies and proxies. These mostly occur in or near the Islamic oil lands (Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen). We must oppose resource war and wars of weapon demonstration (drones over Gaza). We must oppose war for corporate profit. War industry lobbying (Lockheed Martin)

by James Ricks of Upstate Drone Action, previously published on United National Antiwar Coalition Blog and Ithaca Gazette This Nation’s anthem was composed by Francis Scott Key, a racist, white supremacist, anti-abolitionist lawyer. He felt that black people, free or slave, were genetically inferior to white people. That perception was the foundation of his legal pursuits. When he was the District Attorney for the City of Washington, he defended slavery and prosecuted those in the abolitionist movement. He argued in court that

Those who slaughter innocent people will find no glory in this life or the next. They are nothing but thugs and criminals and predators, and that’s right losers. ~President Donald Trump We are Killing Terrorists and Attack We Will, Trump’s Most Vicious Racist Rants by Brian Terrell, Originally Published in “The Sower“, Dec. 17, 2017 On Monday, August 21, President Donald Trump delivered a prime-time speech almost shocking in its ordinariness. It was such an address as either of his